Young Thrissur-based entrepreneur Athul Krishna is building Choodu, an instant beverage cup that needs only hot water to make tea or coffee. But before the media attention, growing sales and international enquiries came a much simpler question: would anyone actually buy it?
There was one person who wasn’t entirely convinced that Athul Krishna’s idea would work.
It wasn’t his family.
It wasn’t the people who first saw the product.
It wasn’t even the bank officials he approached for financing.
It was Athul himself.
Before his first customers arrived, the 21-year-old entrepreneur from Thrissur remembers carrying one persistent fear: Would anyone actually buy this?
Today, that question sits at the beginning of an unlikely entrepreneurial journey — one that has taken Athul from software development to building Choodu, an instant beverage cup designed to make tea, coffee and other drinks with just hot water.
And the idea behind it began on an otherwise ordinary weekend.
An idea on a Saturday night
Before Choodu, Athul was working as a software developer.
He had started working when he was around 18 or 19 and says he was earning approximately ₹25,000 a month. Alongside his software career, he was also running a small marketing venture.
But the desire to build something of his own had been there for years.
Athul wasn’t necessarily looking for just another business. He wanted to create something different — either a product with an element of novelty or one that solved an everyday problem.
Then, waking up after one Saturday night, an idea struck him.
What if making a cup of tea could be made much simpler?
Instead of spending weeks researching whether such a product existed or preparing an elaborate business plan, Athul did something much more direct.
The next morning, he went to a local hypermarket.
He bought cups, blades, cutters and other materials he thought he would need, returned home, and started experimenting.
The rough model worked.
That was enough to make him curious about what it could become.
Building first, learning next
Athul’s approach was unusual.
He did not enter the beverage industry after years of studying tea or coffee.
In fact, much of that learning began after the idea.
Once the first model showed promise, he started studying tea varieties, coffee, blending, sugar, shelf life and cup manufacturing.
Step by step, the experiment began looking more like a product.
That product eventually became Choodu.
The concept is deliberately simple.
The beverage ingredients are already contained inside the cup. A customer adds hot water, waits for less than a minute, and the drink is ready.
Choodu now has variations including tea, coffee, green tea and chukku kaapi, with Athul exploring more products and flavours.
The simplicity of the experience was also what caught people’s attention early on.
Pour in hot water, and what looked like an ordinary cup suddenly becomes a beverage.
Athul says some of the first people who watched it happen reacted almost as though they were seeing a “magic cup”.
But would people pay for it?
Creating a prototype was one thing.
Building a business around it was another.
Athul’s biggest uncertainty wasn’t whether he could physically make the cup.
It was whether customers would want it.
His family and many of the people who encountered the product were encouraging. Some told him they were confident it would sell.
Athul wasn’t so sure.
That uncertainty became especially clear when he approached a bank for financing.
The team at Canara Bank, he recalls, was supportive and encouraged him to consider borrowing enough to purchase machinery — an investment that could have approached ₹10 lakh.
Athul chose not to take that leap immediately.
His reasoning was practical.
If the product failed to sell, the loan would still have to be repaid.
So he started with a smaller amount instead.
Rather than putting everything behind an untested idea, he wanted the market to answer his biggest question first.
Would customers come?
‘Why leave a good job for this?’
There were other questions too.
Athul had already started earning a decent salary at a young age. To people around him, walking away from that security to experiment with a new product did not always make sense.
Why leave a ₹25,000 job?
Why take on the headaches of running a business?
Why not find another job?
Why not look for opportunities abroad?
Athul heard those questions, but says he never allowed them to become particularly important.
The opinions that mattered most were those of his family and the people closest to him.
Then something began to change.
Choodu started attracting attention.
Newspapers covered the product. Television crews came calling. Malayalam media outlets featured Athul’s story, followed by coverage beyond Kerala.
A product he once worried nobody would buy was suddenly being seen by audiences he hadn’t expected to reach.
The less glamorous side of starting up
The media attention, however, tells only one part of the story.
There were also days spent waiting inside a bank.
Athul recalls that while working through his initial financing, he spent more than two months repeatedly visiting the bank.
He would leave home in the morning, arrive around 10 or 10.30, and sometimes stay until the afternoon.
There were rejections.
There were procedural delays.
At one point, there were software-related issues too.
He could have stopped after a few days.
Or after a week.
He didn’t.
Looking back, Athul reduces that experience to three words:
“Consistency ആണ് matter.”
Consistency is what matters.
For him, entrepreneurship is less about endlessly talking about an idea and more about entering the arena, learning what is needed, testing the market and continuing even when progress feels slow.
From a local experiment to thousands of cups
The market eventually began giving Athul the reassurance he didn’t have at the beginning.
During his conversation with Dream Malayalam, Athul said Choodu was moving roughly 25,000 to 50,000 cups in a month at the time.
The business has also started reaching customers beyond India.
Athul says the company has directly sent products to markets including Dubai, Oman, Qatar, Thailand and Indonesia, while people travelling to countries such as the United States have also contacted him about carrying Choodu cups with them.
What began with materials bought from a neighbourhood hypermarket was no longer simply an experiment.
It had become a small but growing business.
Convenience, with an eye on sustainability
Athul also wants the product to address another concern associated with disposable beverage cups: waste.
According to him, Choodu uses biodegradable cups without the conventional thin plastic lining found in many paper cups.
He says the membrane used inside the cup is made from bamboo-based paper, while the cup itself is neither plastic-coated nor wax-coated.
For travellers in particular, Athul sees another advantage.
Someone travelling long distances may not always find the taste, convenience or hygiene they prefer in a cup of tea.
His ambition is to make Choodu something a traveller can carry and prepare wherever hot water is available — while still giving them something closer to the familiar experience of tea from home.
Idea or execution?
Toward the end of the Dream Malayalam conversation, Athul was asked a rapid-fire question:
Which matters more — the idea or the execution?
His answer was immediate.
Execution.
It is difficult to find a better summary of his journey.
The idea arrived on a Saturday night.
The important part happened the next morning.
He got up.
He bought what he needed.
And he tried to build it.
Athul has a similar view when asked to choose between skill and mindset.
He chooses mindset.
Skills, he argues, can be learned. People who possess skills can be brought into a team.
But the willingness to start, learn and persist has to come first.
What comes next for Choodu?
Athul’s plans are considerably bigger than the cup he started with.
He wants to introduce more product variations under the Choodu brand, experiment with flavours suited to different regional tastes and eventually explore cafés and franchises.
His ambition is to make the brand available much more widely.
Yet perhaps the most revealing moment came at the very end of our conversation.
When Dream Malayalam wished him success and suggested that many of those dreams might be a reality by the next interview, Athul responded with a prediction of his own.
By the next time we speak, he hopes we will either be sitting together for the conversation —
or there will already be a Choodu franchise nearby, with a flavour cup in our hands.
It was said with a smile.
But it also sounded very different from the young founder who once wondered whether anyone would buy his product.
A journey Athul calls ‘payoff’
When asked to describe his journey so far in just one word, Athul chose:
Payoff.
The long days, the experiments, the doubts and the repeated attempts are beginning to produce results.
But at 21, with Choodu still growing and Athul already thinking about new products, cafés and franchises, “payoff” feels less like the end of this story than the beginning of its next chapter.
And perhaps there is something worth remembering in the gap between that Saturday-night idea and the company Choodu is becoming.
Athul didn’t begin because he knew it would succeed.
He began without knowing.
Then he kept going.
Watch the Full Dream Malayalam Conversation
In this episode of the Dream Malayalam Podcast, Athul Krishna speaks about leaving software development, building the first Choodu prototype, his fear of whether customers would buy it, his experience seeking financing, the importance of consistency, entrepreneurship in Kerala, and where he hopes to take Choodu next.
[Podcast Coming Soon]
If you know someone carrying an idea they have been afraid to start, share Athul’s story with them.